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Show I REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. -128 side of Commencement Bay. Governor Stevens, finding the Indians dissatisfied with the size and location of the reservation agreed upon, held another council with the Indians on Fox Island in August, 1856, and agreed to a readjustment of the reservation, the exterior . boundaries of which were surveyed and established by his order. A map of the survey was transmitted by the governor to this office under date of December 5, 1856, giving a description of the courses and distances of the exterior boundaries of the reservation. The reservation was set apart for the use of these Indians by executive order dated January 20, 1857. The Indians claim that it was intended to have this reservation bounded on its western side by the waters of Commencement Bay from the southeasterly extrem-ity of said bay around northwardly to the northwestern corner of the reservation on the southerly shore of Admiralty Inlet. The survey was thought to be made so as to give the Indians this frontage upon the bay, with free access to the waters thereof, but when the map was made it showed that there was land along the shore and outside of the reservation, arising from an error of the surveyor in leaving the liie of low-water mark along the shore of the bay and running a 1 . direct line to the place of beginning. In 1873 Superintendent Milroy called attention to this inadvert-ence and asked that the western boundary of the reservation be so adjusted as to conform to the intentions of the parties when the ras-ervation was established, and recommended that, instead of the direct line along the water front, the boundary follow the shore line at low-water mark. On the recommendation of the department the President on Sep-tember 6, 1873, issued an order that the reservation be extended so as to include within its limits all that part of sec. 34, T. 21 N., R. 3 E., not already included within the reservation. The intention of this order was to give the Indians access to a mile of the water front. In 1874 the surveyor-general for the Territory of Washington ex-tended the government survey over the reservation and forwarded to the General Land O5ce a map showing the result of his survey. This map was identical with Governor Stevens's map, except the western boundary of the reservation along the waters of Commence-ment Bay. Governor Stevens's map showed a straight liie across the head of the bay, running from the last monument mentioned in his field notes to the place of beginning, a distance of about 19 miles, while the surveyor-general's map showed an irregular line between these same points, following approximately the line of high water, or what in a general survey would have been a meander line of the bay. Between these two lines there is an area of between 200 and 300 acres I of land bars at low tide, which are covered at high tide. 63268-09-9 ' I |
